Re: A Useful Clarification of Harvard's OA Fund

[Philip Davis <pmd8@cornell.edu>]

David,

I fear that you and Stuart are misunderstanding my point about 
Darnton's  (mis)calculation of journal costs to Harvard, its 
library and its COPE  fund.  Indeed, I argue:

"Given the guidelines for the COPE signatories, many of whom 
refuse to cover publication charges when the author has a grant, 
libraries could technically save money if they require their 
faculty to pay more of the freight of scholarly publishing, 
although this is simply a form of shifting -- not diminishing 
--costs.

Stuart Shieber's counter-post is simply an affirmation of this 
claim.  HOPE pays nothing because it would require Harvard 
authors to pay their own publication fees and the library can 
keep its COPE funds untouched.  This is another problem that I 
point out in an earlier post (http://j.mp/amqdV3). A library fund 
that sits unused is not doing anyone any good.  Claiming that 
unspent funds is a success is like claiming that the government 
is succeeding by not spending its citizen's taxes.  It simply 
makes no sense.

-Phil Davis

David Prosser wrote:

> You may remember a few weeks ago Joe Esposito highlighted a post
> by one of his fellow Scholarly Kitchen bloogers, Phil Davis.
> Phil was taking exception to the narrative on journal prices put
> forward by Robert Darnton in his Three Jeremiads article  (see
> http://bit.ly/ho06Um for details).
>
> One part of Phil's critique, although by no means the main part,
> was whether or not the COPE initiative would save Harvard
> libraries money, especially in relation to the Tetrahedron bundle
> of journals.  Stuart Shieber has responded, highlighting some of
> Phil's misunderstandings of the Harvard OA Fund and explaining
> the flaws in Phil's financial analysis.  The post is at:
>
> http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/pamphlet/2011/02/01/the-tetrahedron-test-case/
>
> I highlight the post only because it picks up on comments already
> brought to the attention of this list.
>
> As a general point, perhaps this highlights the dangers of
> thinking of costs and benefits in single budget lines, rather
> than across whole systems.
>
> David
>